Och aye, the moo

Highland cattle are getting a new lease of life. Jack Watkins reports

Prime, safe beef: the red-coated Highlander

By Jack Watkins

12:01AM GMT 19 Jan 2002

"THE ferocity of the Highlander's appearance belies its docile temperament," says Hilary Barker, as we walk across frozen, hoof-indented pasture on her farm in Callander, central Scotland. Twilight has fallen over this glorious, wintry landscape in the foothills of the Trossachs and, shortly, we are encircled by a heaving mass of a dozen shaggy-coated beasts, jostling to receive the nutrient-rich cow cobs that Hilary feeds them. In the dim light, those enormous, upwardly curving horns look pretty fearsome, but Hilary is right: these are delightful creatures, gentle and responsive to touch.

For decades, the main use of red-coated Highland cattle, when they weren't being exported to Europe, was as tourist postcard material. The demand for faster-growing breeds with large quantities of lean meat made the beef uncommercial. Not any more. Increasingly, they are being used as a tool in conservation management, while the BSE crisis and the export ban led many small hill farmers to discover Highland beef as a niche market answering the growing public demand for safe, traceable, high-quality meat.

"In a way, BSE and the ban was a cloud with a silver lining," says Hilary. "At the height of the European exports boom, you'd pay between £3,000 and £7,000 for a half-decent Highland heifer. Today, you can get one for £700, meaning small farmers such as us can establish folds with quality stock."

She and her husband, Bernard, bought their farm 20 years ago, but it is only in the past two years that the sale of Highland beef has been a going concern, selling direct to customers either by word of mouth or through mail order.

But central to their success have been the burgeoning monthly farmers' markets, which, according to Bernard Barker, are now held in all the main Scottish towns. "The food scares have really stimulated interest," he says.

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The fine-textured, pedigree Highland beef takes a lot of beating for succulence. Unlike most modern beef cattle, which are "finished" in 14 to 18 months, the slower-maturing Highlander takes between 26 and the legal limit of 30 months. Because it is an older meat, it has to be hung longer, enhancing its tenderness and its deeper colour.

"Because we hang the meat on the bone for at least three weeks, it develops this wonderful marbling - little threads of fat through the meat," says Hilary. "These mean it self-bastes. People say they thought they couldn't cook, because beef can be so tough and stringy. But then they try Highland beef and realise it wasn't their cooking at all."

It is also meeting the need for eco-friendly, healthy food. Highlanders happily live out all year without artificial growth promoters and avoid many of the diseases that winter-housed breeds are prone to. And they are productive anywhere in Britain. In Kent, 750ft above sea level, John Elwood manages a thriving fold of Highlanders near Sevenoaks. "They're good grazers and don't need an awful lot of supplementary food," he says. They grow to 1,100 lb - their average weight - and are sold to the local butcher at the rate of one a fortnight.

There are several small folds in the south of England now selling pure Highland beef, yet demand could soon outstrip supply. A recent survey of Highland beef producers conducted by the Highland Cattle Society showed most respondents reporting a rise in demand of between 30 per cent and 400 per cent in the past two years. Because, out of the total UK cattle population of one and a half million, only about 30,000 are pure-bred Highlanders, Hilary predicts a shortage if demand continues to rise.

Now that its qualities are being appreciated once more, she hopes more breeders will enter the market. "Highland cattle are a joy to work with," she says, "and if you are concerned about the environment and how farming and livestock interacts with it, you've got to look at Highlanders."

She points out that the Government, unlike every other country in the EU, is the only one not to pay a premium for native breeds. This is especially perverse, given the way in which the Highlanders' grazing habits are known to benefit the countryside.

In Glenshee, Perthshire, Keith Howman's fold has 100 head of Highland cattle and he can vouch for their usefulness in grouse moor conservation, which makes up 400 acres of his farm.

Howman has shot grouse in the moors since boyhood, but in the past 50 years he has seen the quality of the heather decline - and, with it, the diversity of bird species - caused, he says, by overgrazing sheep. For the past four years, he has grazed Highland cattle on the moor instead and the results have been striking.

Some areas have been fenced off from the cattle, yet in the sections where they have been allowed to graze the heather regeneration has been identical. He says that, while sheep will make straight for new heather growth, the cattle, as less-selective grazers, will eat the ranker vegetation, enabling the heather to regenerate after burning. Already, grouse numbers are rising and Howman says the state of the heather is now "as good as you will get".

Howman is not the only one to have discovered the benefits of Highland cattle in upland vegetation management: Scottish Natural Heritage and, in England, the National Trust, use them on their land. In fact, the only organisation that hasn't woken to their qualities is the Government. Instead of encouraging the globalisation of agriculture and crying crocodile tears for the tropical rainforests that it is destroying, isn't it time it supported native breeds that produce healthy meat in an environmentally sustainable way?

Now that Britain has been declared free of foot and mouth, the annual spring show and sale of Highland cattle will take place on Monday, February 11 in Ban, Argyllshire. Details from the Highland Cattle Society (01848 331866; info@highlandcattlesociety.com).